To Dress a Queen: The Season 7 Costumes of Daenerys and Cersei

“The Dragon and the Wolf” brought the Dragon Queen and the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms face-to-face for the first time. Costume designer Michele Clapton shares how she explores this in the outfits of each queen, down to every stitch.

This season allowed for Clapton to explore Daenerys’ style in a colder climate, in addition to representing her homecoming: “We kept the boots and trousers because that’s her trademark. I wanted to start going towards charcoal and red, because those are [Targaryen] sigil colors.”

“I didn’t want her to wear a crown,” Clapton continues, “but I wanted her to wear something that signified status.” Clapton chose a chain with a three-headed dragon on the end: “There was a weightiness to it. I wanted her to have authority.”

As for Cersei, “She’s been quite extravagant,” Clapton comments on Cersei’s outfits this season, which incorporated a lot of spikes. For the stand-out dragonpit outfit in Episode 7 however, Clapton used a chain-mail style dress and a black molded coat, with one telling design ‒ a slashed pattern on the back of the queen’s coat. “I knew she was lying,” Clapton explains what inspired the look. “Something about the slashing and the twisting told you a lot about her character, a contradiction of the costume from the front. It’s almost like a sting in the tail, something on edge as you see her walk away: there’s something really disturbing about this woman.”

Click on an image in the grid below for an up-close look at some of Cersei’s costumes: